


double clutch

by pocoloki



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: (the drowning is mostly metaphorical), Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Don’t copy to another site, Drowning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2020-01-05 20:51:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18373859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocoloki/pseuds/pocoloki
Summary: Victor has been drowning for a long, long time.And now he’s latched onto Yuuri Katuski in turn, blinded by hopeless infatuation and his own desperation to keep his head above the water.Yakov doesn’t know if Katsuki is dragging Vitya down with him or vice versa, but he knows how this will end. They will sink to the bottom together, hearts broken and careers in tatters, and Yakov doesn’t know if he’ll be able to repair the damage.After all, he's far too old to jump in after drowning boys.





	double clutch

When Yakov was eleven years old, he'd almost died. 

He had been out with his cousin, skating on a frozen pond near their grandmother’s home. They were young, foolish boys, and like most young, foolish boys, thought themselves invincible. They hadn’t thought to check the thickness of the ice, too caught up in the sunlight shining off the snow and the brisk February air to be bothered with such trivialities. 

Too late, he had heard the ice splinter and crack beneath Dmitri’s feet, turning just in time to see the top of his cousin’s head disappear beneath the water. Because he was young and foolish, Yakov had stood rooted to the spot for a moment, just watching. 

He thought Dmitri must be fine. He was not splashing and flailing at the surface of the water like the drowning victims Yakov had heard about. He was not calling for help when his face broke the surface. It almost looked like he was playing. 

It wasn’t until Yakov got closer and saw the look of unabated terror in Dmitri’s eyes, just inches below the surface, that he realized what was happening. Without thinking twice, he had knelt at the ice’s edge and offered a hand to his struggling cousin. He didn’t know what he expected would happen next, but whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t for Dmitri to grab him by the forearm and pull him under as well. 

He doesn’t remember much of that day, the years between dulling the memory, fading it around the edges until only the faintest images remain. Still, he remembers the cold, such cold, the all-consuming panic and the burning in his chest as his lungs strained for air. He remembers the weight of Dmitri’s hands on his back, trying to push himself to the surface, pushing Yakov down to do so. He remembers clutching at Dmitri, pushing him down in turn, absolutely nothing in his mind except the overwhelming drive to get back to the surface at any cost. He remembers feeling that terrible ache in his lungs and thinking,  _ I am going to die here _ .

And he might have, they both might have, had it not been for Dmitri’s sister Svetlana, who had watched them from his grandmother’s window and scrambled out after them. 

He does not remember exactly how she pulled them out, but he remembers how the snow had felt scraping against his back as she dragged the two of them away from the pond, gasping in air and coughing out water. 

“I’m sorry, Yasha,” Dmitri had said in between coughs, tears on his face, still shivering. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

Yakov had learned two things that day. One, that drowning didn’t look like he expected it to. And two, that a drowning man would grab on to anything to keep himself afloat, even if it meant dragging another down with him.

~~~

By the time he’s sixty five, Lana is long dead, and Dima has moved across the country to raise his children and grandchildren. His late grandmother’s land was sold decades ago, and the only ice he spends his time around these days is solid and strong. The lessons he had learned that day live far at the back of his mind, barely a thought spared to them in ages. 

Still, he thinks, watching the monitors at the Sochi GPF as Vitya runs through the motions of his free skate behind him, he recognizes a drowning man when he sees one. Splashing, flailing, crying out for help. Hitting the ice hard, once, twice, thrice, before making his way to the Kiss and Cry, ashen-faced and barely holding back tears.

He’s momentarily distracted by Vitya, who has stopped his run-through to watch the Japanese skater’s performance, lips downturned, regret and empathy in his eyes. Yakov admonishes his student for being so easily distracted and pushes the drowning man from his mind, wrapped up in preparing Victor for his performance.

He needn’t have worried, of course. Vitya nabs his fifth consecutive GPF gold that night, and Yakov thinks no more about the other skater or Dima or that day on the pond. That is, until the banquet later that night, when he comes back from the bar to see that same drowning man, Katsuki from Japan, very drunk, half-undressed, and engaged in a paso doble with Vitya on the dance floor. 

Again, like a fool, he thinks nothing of it. Again, like a fool, he fails to see the danger in what a drowning man is capable of. He’s less than thrilled to see his charge making a spectacle of himself in the middle of the banquet hall, but Vitya is an adult and there’s really nothing Yakov can do to stop him. Besides, he doesn’t remember seeing Vitya smiling so genuinely in a very long time. What could be the harm in letting him have this?

But then he sees Katsuki latched on to Vitya, quite literally, right there in the middle of the dance floor, begging him to come to his family’s onsen, to be his coach. He ought to have put a stop to the whole thing right then and there, dragged Vitya off the dance floor and talked some sense into him before it could spin so out of control. 

But, he decides, in a moment of carelessness that he will regret for months, Yuuri Katsuki is not his problem. 

Until he is. 

Until Victor spends all of breakfast the next morning incessantly checking his phone, waiting for a call or a text from the Japanese skater that never comes. Until he spends the plane ride home poring over every YouTube video of Katsuki he can find, actually taking notes in the dog-eared, spiral bound notebook he saves for costume and choreography ideas, his eyes alight with something unfamiliar that Yakov cannot place. 

Until Vitya comes to practice in the following months charged with energy, eager to develop a new program for next season, caught between exploring two different versions of love. Until he starts watching Yakov coach as much as Yakov watches him skate, even going so far as to offer advice and critiques to Yura, to both his own and the young skater’s chagrin. 

Until that thrice-damned video goes up, of a far heavier Katsuki skating a near-perfect rendition of Vitya’s program. 

It’s only when Yakov finds himself standing alone at the airport, watching Vitya’s plane get smaller and smaller until it’s no more than a speck in the night sky, that he remembers that day with Dima. That he remembers the way his cousin had really drowned. 

No shouting, no flailing, nothing obvious. Bobbing just below the surface, unable to draw in breath to scream for help, unable to do anything except desperately try to keep himself afloat. Cold metal to the lips, a dazzling smile for the cameras, all teeth and no eyes. Long hours at the rink, refusing to leave the ice until he can barely even stand, let alone skate, because it’s better than the empty apartment waiting for him when he leaves.

Yakov is a fool. He should be better at recognizing the signs of drowning by now. He should have seen it long ago, but he hadn’t, and now it’s too late. 

Maybe it’s because it had happened so slowly. The child Yakov had known had started out, if never safe on dry land, only ankle-deep, caught up in his dreams and his desperate attempts to buy his parents’ love with the only gold he knew how to come by.

Maybe it’s because the water had come in a gradual trickle, building up over the years, creeping up over his knees, his waist, his chest. Maybe Victor himself hadn’t known anything was wrong until he slipped silently beneath the surface.

Maybe Yakov hadn't seen it because he just didn’t  _ want  _ to see it. Didn’t want to acknowledge the fact that the weight of every medal around the boy’s neck made it harder for him to tread, to keep his face above the water. Maybe because he was fighting so hard to keep himself afloat, Yakov just hadn’t noticed the moment when he finally succumbed to the waves.

Whatever the reason, the fact of the matter is this: Vitya has been drowning for a long, long time. 

And now he’s latched onto Yuuri Katuski in turn, blinded by hopeless infatuation and his own desperation to keep his head above the water. 

Yakov doesn’t know if Katsuki is dragging Vitya down with him or vice versa, but he knows how this will end - the same way it had nearly ended for him and Dima all those years ago. They will both sink to the bottom together, hearts broken and careers in tatters, and Yakov doesn’t know if he’ll be able to repair the damage.

But he can’t stop it. He’s too old to jump in after drowning boys, and Vitya wouldn’t listen to him anyways. So he watches, and waits, and prays against all hope that they’ll come to their senses and call an end to this coaching charade before things go horribly wrong. 

The don’t, of course. Because Vitya is as headstrong as he is stupid and selfish and desperate, and apparently so is Katsuki. 

And then the Cup of China. 

Katsuki had surprised Yakov the day before, impressed him, even, with that strong short program of his, the one he’d seen Vitya practicing on the ice back home in a lovestruck daze. Today, though, Katsuki looks a mess. 

Dark circles under his eyes that even makeup can’t hide, a dazed, muted panic in his face as he warms up. Vitya hovers at his shoulder as soon as he steps off the ice, looking far out of his depth and nearly as panicked as Katsuki himself. 

_ Serves him right,  _ Yakov thinks.  _ I warned him he wasn’t cut out for this.  _

The he pointedly tears his attention away from the trainwreck-in-progress to focus on the task at hand. He doesn’t have time to babysit his ex-student as he plays coach, he’s here for Georgi and Georgi alone, to keep him focused on his free skate rather than brooding over Anya. 

In the end, though, there is only so much he can do. Georgi’s tumultuous and dramatic nature gets the better of him, and he skates a messy and chaotic program that Yakov knows well before the second half will not propel him to the podium. 

As he shepherds Georgi off the ice, debating whether to lecture him now or later, he spots the two fools approaching the sideboards, Katsuki looking worn and conspicuously red-eyed, Vitya uncharacteristically chastened. 

He tries to push his focus back to Georgi, to give him notes on his performance as he gets his scores, but his attention keeps getting pulled back to Vitya and Katsuki, now poking the top of Vitya’s head for some reason as he gets ready to skate. 

This is it, he thinks. This is where it ends. Two drowning men pulling each other into the depths, just like he knew they would. For some reason, it doesn’t bring the vindictive rush of satisfaction he’d thought it would in his darkest, most bitter moments. It just feels sad. 

And then Katsuki turns and makes his way to centre ice. And then he starts to dance.  

And then Yakov watches, breathless in shock and amazement, as two broken, drowning men grip each other tight…

 

…and start to swim. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> "Double clutch" is a lifeguarding term, referring to a situation in which a drowning swimmer will grab on to another swimmer/rescuer in an attempt to keep themselves afloat, pulling them under as well and creating two victims. 
> 
> It's also what I imagine these two absolute goobers looked like to Yakov during the early days, and... well, this happened. 
> 
> A million thank-you's to the amazing [postingpebbles](https://postingpebbles.tumblr.com/) for looking this over for me and just generally being a wonderful human being. You are the actual literal best!! <3
> 
> Come scream at me on [the tungle](http://sweet-vitya.tumblr.com/)


End file.
